HIMSS 2023: Turning the volume up on interoperability

In the land before HITECH, there may have been talk of interoperability, but it was a whisper.

With the advent of HITECH—the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, for any healthcare newbies in the audience—that whisper became an inside voice.

In the nearly 15 years since HITECH, the noise around interoperability has become louder. 

This year, as I walked around HIMSS, I realized the interoperability noise is now a scream. 

Shared pain points

If you perused the booths at HIMSS this year,  you’d think there is no interoperability problem in healthcare. Vendors made claims about interoperability that made you think they can solve all of your problems and let you turn on your Out of Office during HEDIS season without batting an eye.

And yet, for those of us living in the real world outside the halls of HIMSS, we know there is an interoperability problem in healthcare, and it’s a huge one. 

Patients, providers, payers, and other healthcare stakeholders are all frustrated that more strides haven’t been made around interoperability since HITECH, and they are looking at technology to solve the problem of data exchange, or lack thereof. 

Stakeholders continue to question: Why does the back office of healthcare remain so expensive? Why is so much money spent on administrative costs? Why can’t patients get their data where it needs to be? Why can’t we get and receive the data that’s needed to serve patients and run the business of healthcare? 

TEFCA and the future of data exchange

Increasing frustration with the current state of interoperability in healthcare is rallying folks around the problem, and we’re seeing agencies like ONC take steps to drive regulations that will hopefully facilitate better data exchange. 

TEFCA is on many peoples’ minds. I am hopeful that it will help usher in a new future of more effective interoperability. I also know, however, that TEFCA will not solve all of our interoperability woes. 

While I understand what TEFCA is trying to do, the fact is, it’s simply a framework. As Mike Arce shared in a recent blog, TEFCA may lay out guiding principles around interoperability, but it doesn’t provide actual tools to make interoperability happen. Moxe does. 

An antidote for the pain

As I walked around HIMSS this year and took in all of the noise around interoperability, I wanted to add my voice to the mix. I wanted to say, “Hey! You don’t have to keep suffering! Moxe is here, solving actual problems to enable whole person healthcare. We’re helping providers appropriately share data so, in partnership with their payers, they can meet the demands for clinical data. We’re helping our customers reach higher quality outcomes at a lower cost.” 

Moxe solves the interoperability problem today. And when we use the word interoperability, we’re not picturing fax machines or Bob who drives medical records across town. We’re talking about bidirectional, secure, efficient, cost-effective data exchange that requires no human interference. We’re talking about delivering actionable insights at the point of care. We’re talking about getting the right data into the right hands, at the right time, in the right format, all while placing the utmost importance on data security and privacy. 

We didn’t set out to fix everything in healthcare. We did set out to be the trusted, EHR-agnostic data exchange vendor that transforms the way healthcare data is sent and received. I’m proud of the progress we’ve made and of the 100+ healthcare organizations in our network who have decided they want to be part of the interoperability solution.

Don’t wait for TEFCA 

Whether you’re a payer who needs data or a provider worried about sharing and receiving data, we can help you achieve higher quality outcomes at lower costs. 

You don’t need to wait for TEFCA or other regulatory pressure to decide it’s time to improve interoperability.

Enough time has passed since HITECH. It’s high time we all agreed that interoperability is not built on the fax machine. 

Furthermore, as we look to move healthcare forward, let’s also agree that interoperability cannot just be about data acquisition; it also has to be about data activation. 

We’re here and we’re ready to help shepherd you through TEFCA and to a future where data exchange is better, faster, and cheaper. Are you in?